It featured Top Five singles Thank You and Here With Me and saw Dido pick up
Best Album and Best Female gongs at the 2002 Brits.

She scored another No1 in 2003 with second album Life For Rent, which sold
13million copies.

Then Safe Trip Home, her last album in 2008, brought her total sales to more
than 38million albums worldwide and confirmed her status as the UK’s most
successful female singer — until Adele.

But the Londoner reckons all that, and the £30million she has earned along the
way, pales in comparison with her greatest achievement — Stanley. He was
born in July 2011 and immediately took over the lives of the singer and her
husband, screenwriter and director Rohan Gavin.

Dido said: “Stanley has changed our world. My husband and I are both besotted.

“When he arrived suddenly life, everything, made sense.

“I don’t think anyone can warn or prepare you for just how much you will love
this little bundle.

“It was instant love. For both of us, though, you just don’t know what you’re
doing or what’s going on for that first six months.

“You’re left in charge of this new life and you just don’t have a clue.”

The star reckons the toddler is already showing signs of following her into a
musical career.

She laughed and said: “I think he will be a drummer.

“When I’m rehearsing he’s just there, bashing away with his little headphones
on and absolutely LOVES the cymbals. He just owns that cymbal and he
makes me so happy when I see him.”

He has also given her confidence that she has lacked in the past.

The singer admitted: “Now I have a reason for everything I do — Stanley. And
the older you get, you just feel content about life and happy with things.
In the past I suffered from terrible stage fright. In the early days I
couldn’t even talk to the audience at my shows.

“I was always fine when I actually started singing but the build-up was
paralysing. The bigger the show, the worse I’d get. I’d bring my mum with me
to calm me down.

“At the beginning I’d be hyperventilating and friends would say ‘What is the
worst thing that can happen?’.

“But saying that, everything HAS happened to me — I’ve fallen
over, the whole system has gone down when I’ve been performing. I’ve even
been set on fire. I was making my grand entrance on stage in California in
2001 and the light I was standing on had caught fire. Suddenly there’s all
this smoke and I’m literally on fire as I start singing my song.”

The only downside to getting older, Dido says, is the suspicion she should be
doing more exercise.

She said: “Everyone makes a big deal about turning 40, but I barely noticed
my 40th. The only thing I do remember was thinking, ‘I need to go to the
gym’.

“But when I did go, I managed to fall off the treadmill for the first time
ever in my life and injured myself quite badly.

“I forgot it was on and walked across it to get something and literally went
flying.

“I cut myself and blood was everywhere. But I was still laughing because it
was so Laurel and Hardy. I thought, ‘What a welcome to my forties’. It was
really, really super clumsy. I must just be accident-prone.”

Her next challenge will be figuring out how to organise live shows to support
the new album — with Stanley in tow.

She said: “We’ve not had a nanny or any help yet, just the two of us looking
after him, which has been really great.

“But we are just looking at how I will tour and be a mum.

“It will certainly be different, but I think it’s possible. Other people seem
to manage. I guess now’s the time to go for it as opposed to later, when
he’s started school.

“We just have to work out the practicalities. I’d love to do some shows, even
if it’s not like a full-blown tour immediately.

“Plus Stanley needs somewhere to play his cymbals and showcase his playing.”

Could a future Dido & Son family band be in the making?

She says: “Ha! Yes, we’ll be in a band together. In 15 years it will be Dido
And Stanley.

“Actually, he won’t want to know me then. I’ll be a geriatric and he’ll be
like, ‘Mum I don’t want you in my band any more. I’ll let you do some
backing vocals, but only if you stand behind the curtain so no one sees
you’.”

Dido talks about her music in Something For The Weekend in The Sun
tomorrow. Girl Who Got Away is released on Monday.